Bloomberg reports that Minecraft is adding a new feature to its in-game store: the ability to pay for mods. While the in-game store did already exist, and allowed players to purchase content created by the Minecraft development team, this new move will open the store to community creators and modders, allowing them to sell their creations directly to players.

The store will not immediately be open to all modders, however. The report states that nine creators will be approved for access when the store launches, and they will be selling items like “new storylines, in-game activities, or landscapes”.

Players purchase this content with a new currency – “Minecraft Coins”. Those coins themselves are bought and added to their virtual wallet, or other relevant system-based account, and can then be used to purchase Minecraft Marketplace content on any platform. The platforms that will be launching with the Minecraft Marketplace include Windows, iOS, Android, Apple TV, and Minecraft’s VR offshoots. The Marketplace will not yet be available on Xbox Live or PlayStation Network.

Developers are able to choose how much to charge for their content, though the items that will be available when the Marketplace first launches will range from $1 to $10. Other content creators will be able to apply to have their work featured on the Minecraft Marketplace, but they must ultimately be chosen by the developers, and have each piece of their content reviewed, before they can go live.

Microsoft’s John Thornton explains how the modders will be making money:

“We have a model that allows us to give more than 50 percent of revenue to the creators. They’re all happy with that revenue split and we’re happy with that as well ... We don’t have a strong price cap. If we have content that shows up that everybody agrees is of significant value that a consumer might want to pay more than that, we’ll have that conversation. Ultimately it’s up to the creator to decide.”

Modding has gone from adding cool new features and minigames to an already great game, to adding or supplementing content in an average game, to filling in for lackluster or just bad dlc and expansions, and now to just a way for the company to not put in any work but get paid for what is essentially dlc.

We as a modding community have been doing their job better for some time now. They've realized that and now want to leech off our success. It makes me very sad.

Pretty much my opinion. Especially as they are often incompatible. I blame the steam workshop and bethesda.... I did think about it for a while and decided that allowing third parties to sell in game content is fine. Just don't take the good name of modders away from them!!!!!.

How do we encourage TC's again? I think it's actually the engines, why make a mod when you can make an entire game?

Personally I think people should make TC's still, ARMA has demonstrated how successful it can be quickly proving an idea like DayZ or PLAYERUNKNOWN's Battle Royale before converting them into fully fledged games.

I expect that a lot of modders will turn to inde development as a response to this; after all why waste your time making a TC, overhaul, or other high quality mods when the mod store had skins, hats, and re-textures bringing in the big bucks? if I can spend the amount of time for TC and other big projects making a game that I have full rights to and 100% profits to vs making a TC that I will not get full credit for, take around a P-p cut from people who did no work, and losing out to skins and other cheap mods for bigbucks; why the hell would I bother when I can get a game engine and make my own world?

That's true, but I think TC's have been very successful because you are always marketing them to a huge playerbase that the core game has, so when you transition from TC to full release it generally goes big. That's why I think it is worthwhile.. but its a big time commitment and you are right that the tiny cosmetic mods probably are better and easier long term

Why make a TC for a mod with all your ideas that the company that owns the game you're modding will just claim as their own intellectual property if it becomes even minorly successful just because you used their engine when you can NOT have your ideas and hard work stolen and just make a full-fledged game?

From my observation, the main reason seem to be:
-Games no longer form long lasting communities to warrant such mods. Compare Bf42/2/2142 with the newer Battlefields
-Segwaying from previous, modern games, especially MP, have most of stuff happening on dev/publisher servers, "Always Online" and all that jaz, which in turn means they have to lock things down much tighter to fight of hackers, and in turn hurt modding
-The rise of ingame shops/DLC means that modding intervenes on their finances.

Almost no big AAA release from the past years have had a modding community grow around it, at least not a visible one. In fact, most modern AAA seem to be forgotten as fast as they are released.

I haven't been following modding in a while, but, Source 2 still isn't available to public, right?
That is quite telling of the current state of the industry considering Valve engines being major modding platforms for nearly 2 decades, having given life to some of the best TCs, singleplayer and multi. All 3 current flagships of Valve are uplifted mods, yet all they have recently done for modding is reduce it to skin gambling.

Man, with such a course we will soon have to pay for every movement we make ingame i mean how greedy can you be to sell maps or skin/texture packs, if you want to sell mods atleast sell mods that add something new and unique, but who are we to judge the Great Greed.

When will the paid-mods idea die once and for all? ffs... **** Bethesda all the way for starting this BS.

I'm genuinely starting to think we are living in the downfall of gaming. Because holy ****, things are going from awful to worse.

The amount of big mods is much smaller than it used to be. It's all about small mods or just plain cosmetics. Remember when we called cosmetics "skins"? When the focus were the major mods? Good ******* times.

We insisted so much that games were a form of art. But look now, the developers themselves are betraying the very essence of their games just for the sake of appealing to the masses, while calling it "Innovation". That's not art.

2 problems with this on top of it being ******* ******** already:
-It's going to be exploited to cash in on kids and it's gonna be full of content that's not what it claims to be and is going to rip people off;
-It's always gotta be the companies that want to cash in. The most they deserve is 10 percent. Not a percent more. THEY DO LITERALLY NOTHING!

you guys know that its only going to be on the phone version of MC, and that is not modded anyway, they can't stop it with the java version unless they make everyone get the win10* version (* aka phone version). so java minecraft is safe.

This is where the downfall of mods begins, and still brings about the question of how can you prove you own a mod? If person A (theif) and person B (creator) upload the same mod to micro$hit how are they going to prove who owns it? What if I take a mod from somewhere and upload it as my own after the mod author has moved onto other projects and doesn't realise? How are they going to support people when mods don't work with other mods, how are refunds going to work if you aren't happy with the content?

This brings about so many questions and I honestly hope this entire thing crashes and burns because it's nothing but a cash grab. However the sad thing is it will probably go ahead and be a sucsess as we've seen how many people just throw their cash at stupid ideas (look at half assed DLC that sometimes gets sold for near enough full price (I'm looking at you Sims/EA))

I'm sure Microsoft will answer all of those questions. They'll probably do refunds the same way microtransactions work, meaning there won't be any refunds. Also, people stealing mods have always been a problem in the modding community, hasn't it? It's really annoying. Perhaps Microsoft will do something to stop it. Either way, they are just doing it for money, which is annoying.

No... This I hate...
Microsoft is about the money now, they know they can milk this game especially on mobiles that can't get content but we can ...Mcpedl.com a site that has Textures, Addons, Maps all that can be imported from the device due to one of Minecrafts Newer updates ..
These "mods" will most likely be nothing but addons that you can freely get from the above site .. sorry I won't pay Microsoft for mods -_-
heck I won't with textures ether I always found a way to port one in on the iOS I hate what they have done ... Love the updates will never pay for addons etc ..

Yeah. That's what Microsoft is all about now. Money is the whole reason they bought Minecraft, or even develop any video game at all. Hey, at least we still have Minecraft. Plus, it could be a way for the noobs to get mods.

Oh, that's pretty cool. At first, I was like, "Oh, that's dumb. Why would Microsoft sell mods when there's an entire modding community of free mods?" But if modders not from Microsoft are also able to sell mods, that's pretty cool! For the first time, official mods that can be sold. Still, it's much better just to get Block Launcher on an Android tablet and get mods and custom texture packs for free. Hopefully, Microsoft won't stop Block Launcher from being able to do that. Pretty cool!